1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing apparatuses and methods, programs, and program recording media. More particularly, the invention relates to an information processing apparatus and method, a program, and a program recording medium in which, for example, audio-visual data (AV data), can be recorded and played back on and from a recording medium in real time.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been demanded that high bit-rate AV data can be recorded and played back on and from optical discs.
The assignee of the present invention previously proposed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-005895 a disc drive for recording a plurality of data formats, such as video data and associated audio data, on an optical disc such that they can be recorded periodically and in units of, for example, sectors (without being recorded over adjacent sectors) of the optical disc, and more specifically, such that the boundaries of the video data and the audio data coincide with boundaries of the sectors of the optical disc.
In this disc drive, a certain number of video data or audio data can be collectively recorded on consecutive recording areas on an optical disc, and thus, such data can be read or written without a seek.
Additionally, since video data or audio data can be recorded in units of sectors of an optical disc, video data and audio data are not recorded together in one sector, thereby making it possible to read only video data or audio data. That is, for example, when the user requires only video data or audio data, the required video data or audio data can be read from the optical disc, which enhances the efficiency (speed) in reading only video data (or audio data) compared to when video data and audio data are recorded together in one sector.